The Lost Prince (14 page)

As for the fateful addition of a new housekeeper, one of the reasons Eleanor was able to conduct her complicated life with such seeming grace and calm, both the public and highly secret parts, was the presence of Rose Spurgeon. She had met Rose in 1906, at the time of the birth of her second daughter, Jane. Eleanor had elected to have her children at the Boston Lying-In Hospital, the institution where she had given so much of her energy over the years. “With the common folk,” Frank Burden had said of the decision.

Among the women who had given birth were those who were recovering
from the loss of their child. And as Eleanor walked the halls sharing a good word and good cheer with these women, she encountered a young woman sitting in a chair by her bed doubled up in what looked like grief and pain. In talking with her, Eleanor learned that the young woman was an unwed factory worker from Fall River, one of the poor who benefited from the hospital’s welfare. Her name was Rose Duffy, and having given up her baby for adoption, she had seen it whisked away from the delivery room before she could do more than hold it for an instant. “It is painful, ma’am,” she said finally as Eleanor remained at her side, determined to have a conversation.

“And your people at home,” Eleanor asked, “are they able to accept?”

The young woman only looked up with sad eyes. “My father will perhaps recover from it someday,” she said,” but right now—” She stopped and shook her head.

Eleanor noticed the young woman’s careful diction and remarked on a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
beside the bed. “I read, ma’am,” the young woman said. “It’s my tenth time through. Dreams of a more perfect world, I fear.”

“You could come to Acorn Street,” Eleanor said. Mrs. Thomas, the Burdens’ aged housekeeper, had recently become, as Frank said, a bit questionable of mind. “I shall need help with the baby,” Eleanor said with great conviction. “If you could bear it, your services would be invaluable to me and to the household.”

Rose came to work in the Burden home, caring for the infant and her two-year-old sister, and a year later took over the housekeeper role and soon after that married Tom Spurgeon, who came into the house as gardener and handyman, then responsible driver and mechanic when the Burdens acquired their first auto car.

One day, Eleanor, shortly after the wedding, asked if she and Tom might someday wish to move on. “We all shall understand if a young couple would wish to leave and start a life of their own somewhere.”

Rose looked startled. “Oh, no, ma’am,” Rose said with the firm determination of hers that matched well that of her mistress. “Tom and I shall never wish to leave you and Acorn Street.”

So Eleanor had Rose as a permanent presence. “Steady Rose,” Frank Burden called her. “We shall always have Rose.”

“WE ARE NOT GAMBLERS”

I
n early 1906, when Will Honeycutt had returned from Detroit with the General Motors decision, he had expressed vociferously one objection. “I do not think it wise to have so much money tied up in this one source,” he said, arguing vainly.

Eleanor listened as she always did, then delivered the message she had long known she would have to deliver. “Next year, 1907, will be a disastrous one in the stock market.”

“And how, pray tell, do we know this?” Will asked.

“I just know,” she said, as she always said, with no further explanation. “We shall be removing all our funds.”

Long past asking what on earth she was thinking, Will Honeycutt did ask, “And where now do we put them?”

She knew she would be relying on her partner’s ability to learn yet another financial complexity. Without hesitation she replied, “Chicago real estate. You must travel to Chicago at once and establish a home base for investment.”

When a more thorough explanation was required, she elaborated that investments in Chicago would serve them well over the long haul, the city being one of the fastest-growing in the country and a very safe place to store funds while the stock market appeared vulnerable.

“And how do you know the stock market might be vulnerable?” Will asked.

“I just know,” she said. “And now is the time to make this move. And
besides,” she said, “you will be closer to Detroit. We will keep some of our investments there, as they will not be affected by the market fall.”

“You want out of the market,” Will said, still incredulous.

“
We,
” she said. “We will need to be out of the stock market as 1907 begins.”

“And just when will this calamity take place?”

As with so many other events, she did not know the exact timing, just that the journal entry cited sometime in 1907 as the time for a calamitous crash. “We do not know when, Mr. Honeycutt, just sometime in the year. That is good enough for action, is it not?”

“It is,” Will Honeycutt said, in total resignation. “It certainly is.”

So Will Honeycutt set up a makeshift office in Chicago and from there began removing all Hyperion funds from the stock market and placing them into commercial real estate in that city, in a way that would attract as little attention as possible, the Hyperion Fund having become a significant enough player as to cause market fluctuation by any sudden investments or dramatic withdrawals.

“You will have a full year to withdraw funds discreetly and slowly,” Eleanor said. “That should prevent any adverse reaction.”

And as he had done so many times before, Will Honeycutt took on his new challenge with an obsessive intensity that deprived him of sleep and gave him the look of one deranged. He soon knew more about Chicago real estate than Eleanor thought possible.

On one of his visits back in Boston, Eleanor asked him, “And just what is it that you find so compelling in Chicago? Surely it cannot be simply the buying of buildings.”

He looked at her with wildness in his eyes and then laughed. “I know you think me possessed,” he said. “But I have found the futures market, and I must admit that I spend a good deal of time at the board of trade.”

“It is like the bucket shops, I gather,” Eleanor said.

“It is my new addiction, you would no doubt observe, speculating in pork bellies and wheat.”

“Buying and selling?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Yes,” Will said. “There is a logic to it, all its own, and some people are good at it, instinctively, I believe you would say.”

“And you are one of those who are good at it,
instinctively
.”

“Yes,” Will said humorously. “Yes, I am. But you don’t need to worry. I have it all well within my control, and within my ten percent.”

“I never worry about you, Mr. Honeycutt. I know you will always return to sanity.” And she reached out and patted his arm.

“Speculation
is
my sanity,” he said. “I read the ticker tape and I take my notes and the patterns always appear to me. Now I follow the futures market.”

“I do not understand it, for sure, but I think it is where your genius lies,” she said. “I do not understand, and I can live with that.”

“To the world, I know, it appears to be a great game,” Will said, “but actually it is science, just very fast-moving science.”

“My talents are not in the sciences,” Eleanor said, “but I know we must be out of the market for 1907.”

“And I know my assignment,” Will said. “Move the Hyperion monies to real estate.” Then he stopped and looked straight at her. “But for the life of me I do not know where
your
genius lies.” And then, before she could respond, he said, “I truly do not.” In the long silence that followed, Eleanor found herself wondering where indeed her true talents did lie. Certainly not in the intricacies of managing a monetary fund, a far cry from the music and literature that had consumed her interests just a few years before.

But the moment passed, and she felt Will Honeycutt look away. “You are not going to tell me what really drives this fierce purpose in your life,” he said, “are you?”

“I can’t, Will,” she said.

“That’s all right,” Will Honeycutt concluded. “I can live with that.”

About six months into what Will Honeycutt had begun to call their “Chicago strategy,” the buying up of downtown commercial properties as they became available, he was evaluating their position. He enjoyed the life of a prudent investor in real estate, but the life lacked the excitement of watching stocks rise and fall. He came to Eleanor with a proposal. “I have been talking with Jesse Livermore,” he began.

She had grown to expect something dramatic when the conversation began with that preamble. “Yes?” she said, fully attentive. “And what has the esteemed Mr. Livermore said?”

“I have been so convincing in telling him my strong hunch that next year there will be a collapse that he has already devised a set of preconditions for instability, as he calls them. He insists that the conditions are indeed in place, and a collapse of the markets is indeed a possibility, perhaps even likely. He suggests a strategy.”

“And what does your Mr. Livermore recommend that we do with our money?”

“Not getting out, but selling short,” Will Honeycutt said succinctly. “Jesse agrees now that the market is ripe for a fall. He has already begun plans for borrowing large amounts of stock on margin, with a promise to pay back at the going rate on January 1, 1908, one year after the purchase and after the crash. I think we ought to follow suit. One borrows when the stock is riding high and then pays it back when the stock is considerably lowered in value.”

“And what if the market does not collapse and continues to boom?”

“Then the stock will be
called,
as they say, and Jesse Livermore will lose his shirt.” Will Honeycutt paused and looked at her for a long appraising moment. “But that will not happen.”

“How do you know?” Eleanor asked pointedly, forgetting perhaps how this whole turn began.

For a moment, Will Honeycutt stared in consternation, as if not believing the question. “But it was you who declared that it will collapse in 1907.”

“You are correct. I have predicted that.”

“And when will this collapse happen?”

“I do not know exactly. I only know that it will collapse, within the year 1907. And we shall be prepared.”

“And we should borrow against that fact.”

Eleanor sat up with an erect posture that signaled the end of the discussion. “We shall not. We are not gamblers, Mr. Honeycutt. We shall not be engaging in gamblers’ practices. We shall not benefit from the misery of others.” She did not bother to add that he had his ten percent to do with what he wished. That was his to deduce.

And so Will Honeycutt proceeded with the Chicago strategy and by the first months of 1907, the Hyperion Fund had no money remaining in the stock market. In its place, the fund now owned significant holdings in downtown Chicago, where Will Honeycutt had opened a small office.

“There is nothing to do now but wait,” he said to Eleanor.

As 1907 arrived, there was general agreement in the financial world that the country was sinking into financial recession, a condition that had concerned Frank Burden all year. “Now is not the time to do anything venturesome,” he told Eleanor one evening at dinner when she asked how his bank intended to proceed. “We shall hold tight,” he said,
hold tight
being a favored phrase of his.

“He has nothing to worry about,” Will Honeycutt said. “Boston banks are too conservative to speculate.”

It was not so with some of the biggest New York banks, Knickerbocker Trust being the most extreme. Most of the year 1907 passed without incident, and Will Honeycutt began to wonder aloud if perhaps the whole elaborate maneuver with Chicago real estate might have been a colossal waste of their time.

“Have patience, Mr. Honeycutt,” she said, her confidence never faltering. “We shall see.”

Then in October the wildness began when a group of speculators tried to corner the market in a Montana copper mining company.

“We have seen that before,” Eleanor said to Will Honeycutt, and they both agreed they were glad not to be in the middle of this one. By late October, a full-fledged panic ensued, and people all over the country were withdrawing their savings from banks large and small. Eleanor watched Frank’s reactions each morning as he read the newspapers. “What is happening?” she said.

“It is complicated,” Frank said. “I cannot explain, but Knickerbocker bank has made a colossal mistake, and it is not good. Boston banks would never do that.”

Then a few mornings later, he announced, “The crisis is over; Mr. Morgan has stepped in once again, as he did in the 1890s. He has gotten all the powerful financiers together, it seems, and forced an elaborate buyout, arranging for enough money to be pumped into the banks to keep them afloat. It will take time,” he concluded, “but we will survive.”

By early 1908, Frank’s words bore out, and the crisis seemed past. In the meantime, as soon as the stock prices tumbled, Jesse Livermore was able to pay off his huge borrowings for next to nothing, and he made a fortune, as well as winning a reputation as the man who predicted the Crash of 1907. No one ever suspected the role Eleanor and the Hyperion
Fund had played in his sensational and seemingly clairvoyant strategy.